Super Big Gulp

You’ll take my Super Big Gulp when you pry it from my cold, dead, sticky hands Mayor Bloomberg! 7-Eleven introduced the Big Gulp super-sized soft drink cup in 1976 and as the years passed, the Big Gulp grew: from 20 to 64 U.S. fluid ounces (0.59 to 1.89 liters), the latter being twice the capacity of an empty adult human stomach.

The Super Big Gulp has become the poster child for conspicuous consumption and even if you’ve refilled it with water from your eco-friendly rain barrel, flashing the plastic at an Earth Day walk or trash clean-up event is, well, just a tad awkward.

Twinkies

They’re baaaack… and in the words of Hostess themselves, it’s “The Sweetest Comeback in the history of EVER”. We’re talkin’ Twinkies, the snack that first comes to mind when one thinks of empty calories and lack of nutritional value. Empty of not, Twinkies do provide calories: 135 per portion compared with the 150 provided by the pre-bankruptcy recipe. That’s good, right? Another benefit of the back-from-the-dead “Zombie Twinkies” is a near-doubling of their shelf life from 26 to 45 days.

Chicken Nuggets

Forget “What came first, the chicken or the egg?”, the fowlest query of modern times is “What’s in that chicken nugget?,” followed by (according to NPR) “Maybe you don’t want to know.” While McDonalds has strenuously defended their McNugget formulation, other manufacturers of non-Mc chicken nuggets are keeping a low profile. Those bubbly, rubbery, grayish breaded globs of mechanically de-boned poultry protein are the polar opposite of unadulterated free-range chicken so if a more natural menu is your aim, avoid bargain brands like the plague.